This invention relates to a hanger for holding pieces of limp material such as textile garment pieces either as individual pieces or as groups or stacks of such pieces and for attachment to a conveyor trolley for moving the pieces from work station to work station in a conveyorized garment making plant or the like, and deals more particularly with an improved construction of such a hanger having a plurality of grippers for releasably holding a plurality of work material units to the hanger.
In the garment making industry, the upholstery industry and other industries involved in making articles from pieces of fabric or other limp sheet material by performing various operations on such pieces, such as seam sewing, hemming, embroidering, buttonholing, appliquing, etc., at different work stations, it is known to convey pieces of work material in various different states of completion, and as individual pieces or stacks or groups of pieces, from work station to work station by a conveyor system including overhead rails and switches, trolleys riding on the rails and hangers hanging from the trolleys, with the hangers having some means for releasably holding the workpieces to the hanger. Preferably, the holding means of each hanger should be able to hold workpieces of different size and weight, should be able to hold either a single workpiece or a stack or group of such workpieces, should be easy to operate as far as the loading and unloading of workpieces are concerned and should reliably hold the workpieces to the hanger between the loading and unloading operations. Further, since a conveyor system of the type described normally uses a relatively large number of hangers, the hangers should be of relatively simple, economical construction. A hanger may be designed to hold a single workpiece or a single stack or group of such workpieces, but preferably its design is such as to allow it to hold several workpieces or groups or stacks of such pieces at one time.
Also, after a workpiece is loaded into a gripper of the hanger it should thereafter be easy to remove it from the hanger without having to exert much force on the workpiece, this being particularly important in cases where the workpiece is made of a relatively weak or delicate fabric.
The general aim of this invention is therefore to provide a hanger for use in a conveyorized system of the foregoing character having the above-mentioned requirements. A more particular object of the invention is to provide such a hanger including a plurality of improved grippers each of which grippers serves to hold a single workpiece or a group or a stack of workpieces to the hanger and is very easy to operate, allows different types of loading and unloading movements and is very reliable in holding the inserted workpiece or workpieces.
Another object of the invention is to provide a hanger providing a plurality of grippers and wherein each gripper includes a rotatable grip element which rotates and rolls over a workpiece, thereby reducing the amount of force needed to be applied to the workpiece, when a workpiece is removed from the gripper by pulling it horizontally away from the hanger body.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description and from the accompanying drawings forming a part thereof.